


Is You Is, Or Is You Ain't (My Baby)

by Lasgalendil



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aunt Peggy Carter, BAMF Peggy Carter, Bisexual Peggy Carter, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Found Families, Multi, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Has Issues, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Old Peggy Carter, POV Natasha Romanov, Polyamory, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Up all night to get Bucky (Marvel), World War Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 20:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17793974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lasgalendil/pseuds/Lasgalendil
Summary: "I have lived a life..."For better, for worse, however unwittingly, Peggy Carter had shaped the century and shaped her life. She poured over maps of HYDRA bases and safe houses with Rogers, scoured the earth for the last vestiges of HYDRA and for traces of солдат...She owed him that much, at least. If Dottie Underwood had been a mother figure—however poor of one at that—then солдат had been a brother, child soldier and shot in gut outside Odessa or no.





	Is You Is, Or Is You Ain't (My Baby)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SweetStugLife](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetStugLife/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/456884) by Louis Jordan. 



> I got a gal who’s always late
> 
> Anytime we got a date
> 
> But I love her
> 
> Yes I love her
> 
> I’m gonna walk right up to her gate
> 
> And see if I can get it straight cause I want her
> 
> I’m gonna ask her
> 
> Is you is or is you ain’t my baby
> 
> The way you’re acting lately makes me doubt
> 
> You’s is still my baby baby
> 
> Seems my flame in your heart’s done gone out
> 
> A woman is a creature
> 
> That is always a bit strange
> 
> Just when you’re sure of what you find she’s gone and made a change
> 
> Is you is or is you ain’t my baby
> 
> Maybe baby’s found somebody new
> 
> Or is my baby still my baby true
> 
> Is you is or is you ain’t my baby
> 
> Maybe baby’s found somebody new
> 
> Or is my baby still my baby true
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_You_Is_or_Is_You_Ain%27t_My_Baby

 

SHIELD founder and Former Director Dame Margaret Elizabeth “Peggy” Carter was a living legend, even if that legend was now living at the Knollwood Military Retirement Community.

Many an aspiring agent and stoic soldier had had both their fortitude tested and reputation sullied by an impromptu interaction with said actual Lady and/or her heritage resulting in the abrupt loss of composure--or, as Nick Fury put it, ‘fangirling’ (HR said the term should be gender neutral, but Agent Phillip Coulson had found no shame in it. He had been—and still was, to those few in the know--after all, the biggest self-admitted fangirl in all of SHIELD.).

Peggy Carter was as much a staple of the 20th century as Queen Elizabeth II—arguably even more so, as Carter had already been an active SSR Agent while the Princess was a teenager in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service—a  member of MI-6, the face of the special relationship between Great Britain and the United States from the War until the new millennium. She’d been an outspoken opponent of Hawaiian statehood, outraged by Nixon’s pardon, a supporter of LGSM, enraged by Iran-Contra, a critical diplomat in Somali-American relations, an opponent to the Gulf War and Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom alike. Hers had been the voice of caution and concern after 9/11, ridiculed as too meek and feminine when the world needed action against Radical Islamic Terrorism. And, when her caution had been proven true at the last, in the absence of weapons of mass destruction, well. She was the woman who hadn’t spoken up, whose frail voice failed her, a scapegoat for the Blair’s and the Bush’s behind the atrocities, asked to step down from her agency and retire so a man of action—aggression--might be the new face of SHIELD.

There were rumors, of course. As there always were, following women with power or ambition, and diplomacy and espionage were no exception. And they were cruel, as they always were, where a man built himself up from his own bootstraps, a woman, it was assumed, had unhooked her brassiere (there is nothing quite as frightening, she would one day tell her great niece, as a woman who is both successful and smart.). Most of them assumed to be Soviet propaganda. Had she and Erskine been lovers. Had she and Colonel Philips been lovers. Did she have sex with the Red Skull? Had she and Captain Rogers been lovers? Had her ‘liaison’ between the British and American governments been of a sexual nature? Was she secretly a Soviet Agent? A Communist? A Socialist? Was her marriage to Gabriel Jones merely political stunt fronting the American Civil Rights Movement? And finally, perhaps as only a foot note: what was her relationship with blacklisted actress, Miss Angela Martinelli?

* * *

 

**Washington, D.C.**

**2014**

She had been child in the Red Room. Had gone rogue with the rest of Soviet Intelligence after the Berlin Wall fell, while the Iron Curtain appearied to be crumbling, back in those halcyon days when Vladimir Putin had been a FSB officer and not yet the dictator of a global power. Those days when the US was still convinced it had won the Cold War. She knew better, of course. Empires rose and fell, allegiances changed. But Russia had her Winter.  She never lost, only waited.

She had many names, many strings on the concentric circles of web she had built for herself. Natalia Alianova Romanovna. Natalie Rushman. Natasha Romanoff. Чёрная Вдова.

But by whatever name the world knew her, The Black Widow was a wanted woman. She’d not only blown every cover she'd so painstakingly crafted, she’d exposed herself to the international spotlight. With the SHIELD info dump, she had single-handedly crippled international espionage more than the combined efforts of the Red Room and KGB had ever dreamed. Classified. Top Secret. Above Top Secret. She’d inflamed extinguished Cold War tensions, harmed US-China relations, revealed the World Security Council’s nuclear strike during the Chitauri Invasion. In topping HYDRA, she had created a public relations nightmare.

But perhaps most damningly—at least to her, to Steve Rogers—she’d destroyed the intelligence operation built from the ashes of World War II by none other than Dame Margaret Elizabeth Carter herself.

She wondered what the lady herself would have thought of that. Steve had done a damned fine job keeping Carter’s name out of the mud, of course. The public, President Ellis, and the World Security Council champed at the bit and stamped their feet, but the truth of the matter was that Dame Margaret Elizabeth Carter had advanced dementia, required around the clock skilled nursing assistance, and, had been, for the last several months, bed bound due to osteoporosis and a fractured hip. There would be no interrogations, no tell-all interviews—not that Fox News hadn’t tried. The reveal that Captain America’s former sweetheart Peggy Carter was bisexual left Evangelicals the world over clutching at their pearls.

“What would Steve Rogers say?” Laura Ingram asked on prime time television, as if a nonagenarian’s sexuality were anything other than newsworthy.

Steve Rogers wouldn’t say anything, Natasha knew, because Steve Rogers was a goddamn gentleman. That’s what SHIELD’s PR team would have wanted. That, or a perfunctory ‘Captain Rogers could not be reached for comment.’ But Steve Rogers’ only public appearance since Project INSIGHT had shat in the Potomac was to out himself as bisexual to the press in a brief frowning statement, express his disappointment at the American people for their treatment of his former gf in particular and the LGBTQIA+ community in general, then disappear from the public eye faster than you could say ‘congressional subpoena’.

Captain America had been—was, still—a big damned queer. And Peggy Carter? She was queer as well. And yet of all the parroted agitprop of the Red Room, the success of Operation Infektion, she  had to wonder of all the circulated rumours, why would the Soviet government choose not to act on this damning information?

Paperclip had gutted Steve. She imagined it had rankled Carter when the deal had been made, trading justice for the knowledge of Nazi scientists. But Natasha had been raised on Soviet winters and Realpolitik: what is the enemy of my enemy except my friend? The world of espionage was eat or be eaten, and prey nor predator alike could afford the question of morality. Men like Daniel Whitehall may have rotted in Nuremburg for seventy years like so many among the SS or Hydra’s elite, but Arnim Zola had been offered clemency.

She’d told Rogers it would take time to build new covers. She was counting on it, even. Finding Barnes would be a difficult task, one she was up to, but the girl who went by Natasha Romanov, Чёрная Вдова, first had to find herself.

Her old handlers, the American people, and governments the world over wanted her dead, but she was intercepted not by INTERPOL but by a young CIA field agent named Not Kate Not A Fucking Nurse Carter on a beach in Bali.

“Dottie Underwood is alive. She’s in a retirement home in DC,” Sharon offered, apropos of nothing.

The Red Room Madam. Natasha sat up. “That wasn’t in the HYDRA leak.”

“SHIELD never had that intel,”  Sharon fixed her with a fierce look. “Peggy did.”

Carter.  At a risk to her career, her life, even, Carter had converted a Red Room Operative and kept it hidden from the US government, from the Red Room, the FSB, SVR, HYDRA—even from Natasha herself. “Why tell me?”

 “I’ve kept a lot of secrets. For my work. For my family. After Insight I spoke with Peggy, and we didn’t feel right keeping this one from you.”

“And Rogers?”

Sharon gave a wry grimace. “Captain Rogers doesn’t know we’re related. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Why?”

“I spent my childhood idolizing him, and the last few months running surveillance on him. Steve Rogers will always be a part of Peggy’s life, my family, her legacy. But I think it’s time I moved on.”

“But you’ll still help us,” Natasha read in her steeled composure. “Bring in Barnes.”

“You know, Peggy once told me something—something Steve used to say. She said, ‘Compromise when you can.  And when you can’t, don’t. Even if everyone is telling you something wrong is something right, even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree and say, no, you move.”

“Sanctimonious bullshit,” Natasha allowed. “Sure sounds like Rogers.”

“I’ll do the right thing, Agent Romanov. So long as our interests align, you can count on my help.”

“SHIELD’s gone,” Natasha lowered her sunglasses. “Neither of us are SHIELD agents anymore.”

Sharon stood, her willowy figure outlined by the setting sun. “You and I both know that will never be true.”

“I’ll see you around, Agent Carter,” Natasha called.

“I certainly hope so.”

* * *

 

Sharon’s information proved to be true, not that Natasha had any reason to doubt it: the woman who wasn’t Dottie Underwood lived in an assisted living facility outside of Annapolis. Natasha found her in a rocking chair, sipping tea, a brilliant colored babushka tied under her chin. Time had not been kind to either of them.

Dottie put down her mug without turning around. "I knew one of you would come someday. I hoped it would be you, Natashenka. You are good at what you do.’

“I’m not here to kill you.”

‘I have lived in hiding for so long, and now you come to me and say you will not kill me. You are more clever than this, my little spider. This is not a social visit.’

‘I need information.’

‘It seems you have much.’

“You taught us to use anything. Everything. All the dirt, all the shit we could find, we could forge or fake. You used Erskine against her when you baited her with Ivchenko. Used Stark’s death to drive a wedge between her and Tony. Why didn’t you?”

The woman who was once Dottie Underwood sighed. “I didn’t use it, Natashenka, because I could not incriminate Peggy Carter without incriminating myself. To use homosexuality against a mark is one thing. To admit to being queer, in Soviet Russia? Such a thing was unthinkable.”

“And the girl? Martinelli?”

“McCarthy. The Lavender Scare. Whitney Frost. Isodyne Energies. Roxxon Oil. They couldn’t touch Carter, she was protected.”

“But they could blacklist Martinelli from Hollywood to Broadway.”

“It was the price Peggy paid.”

“All those years. Why would you protect her?”

“Love.”

“Love is for children. You taught me that.”

“I taught you many things so you might survive. It would take a lifetime to unlearn them. Maybe one day you will.”

“You think with enough time and therapy people like us could ever learn to trust,” Natasha scoffed.

“I said love, not trust, Natashenka," the woman who was Dottie Underwood raised an eyebrow in disdain. "I did not raise you a fool.”

Natasha stood to leave.

“I am old,” Dottie called out to her, fingers clutching at her afghan. “I am alone. I have no children, no grandchildren.” So they took that from them both, then.

“You want me to visit.”

“Would you?”

“You stole my childhood. Made me a weapon. A killer. I came today for closure. Why would I want to visit you?”  Without looking back, Natasha added, “Next time, I will bring Moskovskaya.”

* * *

 

For better, for worse, however unwittingly, Peggy Carter had shaped the century and shaped her life. She poured over maps of HYDRA bases and safe houses with Rogers, scoured the earth for the last vestiges of HYDRA and for traces of солдат...She owed him that much, at least. If Dottie Underwood had been a mother figure—however poor of one at that—then солдат had been a brother, child soldier and shot in gut outside Odessa or no.

“What was she like?”

“The first time I met Peggy, she punched a GI into the dirt for sexually harassing her,” Rogers smiled sadly at the memory. “I wish you could have met her, back when…You would have liked her. You remind me off her, you know.”

 “Did you know then? About her?”

“We were both queer as three dollar bills, if that’s what you mean. We didn’t have a word for it back then, bisexuality.”

“And Barnes?”

“Bucky’d have a dame or two on each arm, go out dancing…I think he got up half the skirts in Brooklyn, but it was,” he looked away and sighed. “I think they call it performative heteronormativity, or something. I’m not as up to date on my terminology as I’d like.”

“You’ve been busy, Rogers.” She nudged his shoulder. “Saving the world.” They all had. From Eastern Europe, Argentina, and Antarctica, even headless HYDRA’s roots ran deep, and opportunists like AIM and Ian Quinn welcomed the rats from the sinking ship with open arms.

“Bucky was into guys. The things he and I and Arnie Roth got up to…but he had his ma and da, and the three girls,” Steve decided. “He had to be a ladies’ man, or at least pass for one.”

They were both silent a while. Listened to the wind and the passage of time. “Would you have married her?”

“We had a plan,” he said softly. “For—after. Me and Peg would get married. Have a house. Kids. England or Brooklyn or DC, as long as I had her, it’d be home.”

“And Barnes?”

“Buck’d have a whole collection of cars, be a confirmed bachelor and live above the garage.”

“Cap and Bucky and Peggy Carter, swingers,” Natasha snorted.  “The American public’s not ready for that.”

He looked at her, then, really looked at her, saw Clint and Laura, Sharon, Dottie, the desire to love, inability to trust written all over her face. “Still isn’t. So fuck ‘em.”

Literally. Metaphorically. Natasha snorted. “That’s quite a mood, Rogers.”

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
